160,000 Students Stay Home from School Every Day Because of Bullying. Really?
At the Cyberbullying Research Center we strive to approach the issue of teen technology use and misuse from a data-informed perspective. Just to be clear, data doesn’t just mean bar charts. Over the last ten years we have formally surveyed over 12,000 middle and high school students, so yes, we have a lot of bar […]
Cyberbullies Move Beyond the Schoolyard
For those of you who didn’t see, I recently wrote a blog for Huffington Post UK to correspond with the cyberbullying event in London that I was a part of. Here it is: Teens have been bullying each other for generations. The latest generation, however, has been able to utilize technology to expand their reach […]
Education Week Teacher Book Club
One of the first things we learned in our earliest cyberbullying studies was that targets were not telling adults about their experiences. Even today, very few students who are cyberbullied talk with adults about what is going on. The concern we have heard from adolescents time and time again is that they are afraid to […]
Law Enforcement Perspectives on Cyberbullying
Much of our work to teach adults about what teens are doing online is directed toward educators or parents, but increasingly we are working with law enforcement officers – especially those assigned to a school setting (school resource or liaison officers). Like the others, police officers often find themselves in a difficult situation when confronted […]
White House Bullying Conference
On Thursday March 10, 2011, the White House convened a conference to address the issue of bullying. First Lady Michelle and President Obama welcomed parents, students, researchers, industry leaders and others to discuss the negative effects of bullying and highlight some of the best-practices and promising approaches in prevention and response. I was honored to […]
A Call for Consistency in Information Reported in Cyberbullying Research Articles
Here at the Cyberbullying Research Center, in addition to our own projects, Sameer and I work hard to stay on top of all of the cyberbullying research being done by others. When new reports are released, or when articles are published in journals, we are probably among the first to read them. While there has […]
New Details Emerge in the Phoebe Prince Tragedy
We’ve discussed different elements of the Phoebe Prince case a number of times on this blog. Recall that Phoebe was the 15-year-old girl who committed suicide in January after being bullied and cyberbullied. She moved to South Hadley, Massachusetts, from Ireland at the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year. Being the new girl, she had […]
The Current State of Cyberbullying Research: A Brief Summary
The Committee on Education and Labor’s Subcommittee on Healthy Families and Communities heard testimony today about how teens are using and misusing technology, with a specific focus on cyberbullying and social networking. A full web cast of the testimony can be found here. The witnesses included a health care provider, an Internet safety advocate, a […]
New Report: “Youth Safety on a Living Internet”
The Online Safety and Technical Working Group just released their comprehensive report “Youth Safety on a Living Internet” detailing the current state of knowledge, practice, and tools regarding safeguarding our youth while they explore technology. The Report focused primarily on identifying industry efforts to promote online safety through education, technology, content, and other measures. In […]
Cyberbullying Panic?
Several high profile incidents have put cyberbullying at the top of the headlines in recent months. When Sameer and I first started studying this problem over eight years ago, it was rare to see a cyberbullying story in the media, now they are everywhere. Larry Magid, a technology journalist who contributes to a number of […]